


Atonement, Part 6

by elfin



Series: Atonement [6]
Category: Flatliners (1990)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfin/pseuds/elfin
Summary: Aftermath





	Atonement, Part 6

On the Monday after that Friday night we went over to his apartment, cleaned the blood from the bathroom, the floor and his hockey stick, changed the sheets. The wooden floor was stained so we went out and bought a rug, an expensive one in warm autumn colours. I finally told him how much I hated his place. He laughed, said he was barely there; slept and studied there but never ate there. He’d bought it, he told me, because it was the kind of place his parents would have hated. 

We picked filled a sports bag with clean clothes and some books and I took him back to mine. I wasn’t ready to let him out of my sight yet. He stayed at my place for a week, then insisted on giving me some space, insisted on going home to do some laundry, to try to get back to normal.

I kicked around my empty apartment for an hour after he left. It didn’t feel right without him in it. He doesn’t take up much space; his books were at one edge of the wooden table in the lounge, the oversized navy sweater I brought over for him on that first Sunday, hanging over the back of the armchair he liked to curl up in to read. Apart from that there was little evidence he’d ever been there. Apart from us of course, and the polar change in our relationship. I went out for beer, came back after one and put some music on. I must have fallen asleep because the phone woke me. It was just gone midnight according to the clock in the kitchen. The last time anyone called that late... my pulse was racing as I answered it.

‘David....’ It was Nelson, and I recognised the tone of his voice, the fear underpinning his words. ‘I can’t stay here.’

I went to collect him. He was waiting for me on the steps of his building and when I saw him, I just got my arms around him and held him for a few long seconds. He clung to me, I could feel the tremors in him. I didn’t ask if he was okay, he obviously wasn’t. In the jeep he told me he’d gone to bed early and he’d been woken by a noise, a scraping sound like the one the memory of his dog had made, a prelude to an attack by the memory of Billy Mahoney. He knew logically it had been a nightmare that had woken him, that he’d dreamt the sound. That didn’t make much difference to his traumatised mind. 

The next day I went back there, picked up his clothes, books, toiletries and took everything back to my place. I say everything, it all fitted into two small suitcases. He had nothing in the way of personal stuff, except for his hockey stick. Even with him moved in he took up so little space that when the others came round they didn’t comment. 

Rachel, Joe and Steckle had got away with warnings after leaving class without permission or explanation that Friday morning. Nelson had gone back to school after a few days, and I got a part time job at the college pharmacy, just until the end of term. 

One evening I got home to a message left on my answering machine. It was Rachel. Nelson had been taken to the hospital during a hockey game, the first hockey game he’d been to since Billy had cracked his face open with his own stick. 

I hadn’t thought about it. Neither of us had. 

I drove at breakneck speed from my apartment to the hospital building. Rachel’s message hadn’t said much, just that he’d taken a hit to the head and they were worried about concussion. Last thing Nelson needed was another head wound. I wondered how many questions were being asked about the other injuries still in evidence. 

I practically ran into Steckle in the hospital entrance. ‘Dave, he’s okay. Just… take a breath okay?’

Rachel joined us. ‘Where is he?’ I just wanted to see him, see for myself that he was all right.

‘They want to keep him overnight. He apparently lost consciousness, they want to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion before they release him.’ 

‘I want to see him.’

‘I’m right here.’ We all turned to see him limping along the corridor towards us. 

‘Nelson.’ Relief warred with concern. He was white, a square of gauze taped to the left side of his head, almost exactly where Billy had got him. His T-shirt had blood on it. I stroked my hand over his shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t be up.’

‘I don’t want to stay here.’ He looked at me, a silent plea.

‘I’ll stay with you.’

‘I just… I want to go home. Please.’

He rode in the back with Rachel and every time his eyes closed I heard her talking to him, keeping him awake. When I made the turn to my place instead of heading out to his, Steckle looked at me across at me from the passenger seat.

‘He said he wanted to go home.’

‘We are going home.’

It took a moment, dawned slowly. ‘All right. Good. Good for you.’

Rachel looked equally confused when she helped Nelson down from the back of the jeep but she didn’t say anything. When we got inside I followed him through to the bedroom, sat him down on the edge of the bed and made him follow the end of my finger until I was confident his eyes were tracking right. 

‘Can I change my T-shirt now?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Sorry I scared you.’

‘You’re gonna tell me what happened.’

‘Yes. Just… give me a minute, please?’

I gave him some space, went to fix the others a drink. Steckle asked for a beer, Rachel for coffee, and by the time I took three mugs into the lounge, Nelson was ensconced in what had become ‘his’ the corner of the couch. He’d changed into a dark sweater over a white long sleeved T-shirt. The weather was getting colder and his circulation didn’t seem so good. Problem was, I didn’t know if it had never been great or if it was a side effect of his near and actual death experiences.

I sat up on the arm next to him, pressing two fingers to the pulse point on his wrist as an excuse to touch him.

‘It was an accident,’ he reassured me, reassured all of us. ‘I… saw the stick coming towards me and froze.’ He laughed, just slightly hysterical. ‘I fucking froze….’ Sliding my arm around his shoulders I leaned back and he settled with his head against my hip. 

‘That’s understandable. Joe told me he hasn’t been able to look through a viewfinder since….’ Steckle trailed off. ‘Sorry.’

‘Joe didn’t kill anyone. None of you did.’ There was no accusation, no inflection to Nelson’s voice except for guilt and apology. ‘I’m sorry about what I said to you all, that Friday evening. I’m sorry for everything I put you all through. I feel like I don’t deserve any of you. You don’t have to keep looking out for me.’

‘We do,’ Rachel said defiantly. 

‘We will,’ Steckle affirmed.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Steckle smiled, ‘Dave obviously loves you. And the last thing we want to do, the very last thing we want to do, is get in Dave’s bad books. I mean, he’s got three pickaxes in the back of that jeep, did you know that?’ I glanced at the top of Nelson’s head, watched him nod almost imperceptibly. I don’t think we ever told them what happened in Bensenville. ’Seriously, we agreed to look out for one another and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

After they left, he swore to me, ‘I didn’t see Billy out there on the hockey field, Dave. It was just the stick and the memory… it’s still raw.’

‘It’s only been a few weeks. It’s going to take time. If you were an actual patient I would be recommending therapy or counselling. A support group. But you’re not. And we’re really the only ones you can talk to. But if you need to talk to one of the others, if it’s easier than talking to me, I promise you-‘

‘Dave.’

‘I won’t mind.’

‘Dave!’ He was up on his knees on the couch, hands framing my face. ‘It wasn’t Billy. I froze and that’s the last thing you expect when you’re playing hockey. No one freezes in the face of an incoming hockey stick. The player’s name is John Malcom. You can ask him, ask the whole team. I froze, he was in mid-swing, it was an accident. He was the first at my side, he was as worried as you guys.’ He hesitated. ‘Okay, maybe not as worried as you guys.’ He kissed me. ‘Billy hasn’t come back since you saved my life. He isn’t coming back.’

I had to take Nelson’s word on that. I had to trust him, not only with my life - which was easy - but with his own.

*

We took flowers to Billy’s grave. It had been eating at me that Joe and Steckle had been to the cemetery with Nelson but I hadn’t. 

‘I thought I was the ridiculously jealous one,’ Nelson had commented, but he directed me as I drove us through his old stomping grounds and led the way through the overgrown graveyard to the tombstone. 

Steckle had talked to me about that night, about how they’d chased Nelson along dark alleyways, climbed through the remains of buildings, scaled a wall and dropped into the cemetery. The place was surrounded by tall, imposing trees. Easy to imagine how it would have looked that Friday night, in the cold and the dark, with them already freaked out and Nelson howling into the air somewhere in front of them. Steckle blamed me, I think, for leaving Nelson in their care, or maybe for leaving them with a man in the final stages of a psychotic break. Walking from the jeep, I could tell now what he’d done, led them through the maze he had to ensure he could get away quickly, before they could stop him. He’d known what he was going to do before they’d even got here. 

If they hadn’t found phone box, if they hadn’t called me… A minute or two later to the chapel and we could have been burying Nelson. But not here.

It was a grim, if peaceful place. We crouched by Billy’s grave and lay roses on the earth.

‘Rest in peace, Billy.’ I meant it, didn’t want to give him any reason to come after Nelson again. If indeed he really had. I still don’t understand what happened.

We were going to have to keep our relationship quiet, we both understood that, but out here, with no one to see but the dead, I took his hand and held it as we walked amongst the graves, fingers laced together, his palm warm against mine.

‘I want to be cremated.’ 

I squeezed his hand. ‘Okay. Not in the near future, I’m hoping.’

‘So do I.’ He paused, hesitant. This was Nelson without the walls, without his well-honed defences. If I’d been protective before, that streak felt a hundred miles wide now. ’I can’t quite believe we’re here, you and I. This is all…. It’s a lot to take in.’

‘Why is it so difficult to accept how I feel about you?’ I knew the answer to that one. He’d spent half his life loathing himself, considering himself unworthy of life and devoting himself to researching death. Like Rachel he was looking for comfort.

‘After Billy died, no one… wanted me. I was disowned, disposed of. Stoneham was hard. I missed my family. But after a while grief turned to anger. I was still angry with them when they died.’

‘They were supposed to protect you.’

‘I was a monster-‘

‘You were just a kid. We all did things we regret when we were that age. The only difference is that Billy fell. It was an accident, Nelson. He’s forgiven you, now you have to forgive yourself.’ 

‘That feels like the harder thing to accomplish.’

‘Well, hey, getting Billy to forgive you was a piece of cake.’ I glanced at him and he was smiling, a beautiful shy smile I’d rarely seen in the past. ‘I’m serious. It’ll eat away at you if you don’t.’

Only once we were back in the jeep, he admitted, ‘I’m not sure I know how.’

I reached for him, twisted my fingers gently in his hair and pulled him forward until his forehead rested against mine. ’We’ll work it out. We have to. Because I don’t want to lose you to the past.’

‘I’ll try, I promise, Dave. Just promise me something?’

‘Anything.’

‘Don’t let go of the rope.’


End file.
